Nice clean design. You could make it very action-heavy and the player would never lose focus. Sometimes less is more, I really like it.Reminded me of Jumpman right away. (yes, totally different colors, no tiny holes in the ground layers, no directional ropes... but still :) ) We used to play that for hours and hours with friends, taking turns, shouting at each other's mistakes. Brings back memories.Hope you also add different enemies and challenges each level. That was what made it so great. That silly spear throwing level. Or the one where your clones follow every step you take. The disappearing or appearing ladders... Loved it.

Nice clean design. You could make it very action-heavy and the player would never lose focus. Sometimes less is more, I really like it.Reminded me of Jumpman right away. (yes, totally different colors, no tiny holes in the ground layers, no directional ropes... but still :) ) We used to play that for hours and hours with friends, taking turns, shouting at each other's mistakes. Brings back memories.Hope you also add different enemies and challenges each level. That was what made it so great. That silly spear throwing level. Or the one where your clones follow every step you take. The disappearing or appearing ladders... Loved it.

I checked out Jumpman for the C64 - interesting mechanics and looks fun. I've looked at countless platformers on retro sites to get some inspiration. There seems to still be lots of people working on C64 hardware.

I think my wee guy looks better. I spent more time than I should on the animation - 8 frames for each direction just the running, same for crawling and walking etc... Just got the shooting, climbing and hit/death ones to do and then on to getting the gameplay working with placeholders for the enemies.

The idea will be simple, start the level on the bottom left/right, kill everything on the level (some are patrolling, some drop from above), don't get killed then exit through a door to the opposite side - eventually reaching a Boss room. The shooting / killing has to be satisfying and challenging or I won't be satisfied. Think lots of particle effects, blood and shell casings etc...

Making some decent progress on level tiles to introduce some variety and a bit more detail. Added a shadow effect on the player character. Got some 8bit sounds working too. I'm hoping to get a procedural level creation system working but I reckon it'll be tricky to ensure you can reach everything. I was toying with dropping the climbing and just have you jumping around .. will see what works best.

Decided against the procedural level creation - far too much work involved to check if you can get to every area. Below is my test level. The wooden platforms are one way and can be shot through, the dark grey are the same but can't be shot through and the light gray block movement in all directions.

Added collision mask for pixel perfect collisionsAdded shooting, shooting animations etc..Added some particles effects, muzzle flashes, casings, bullets and smoke added. Plan to have big explosions and body parts flying around and lots of blood.Added some enemy limpet guns, there will be Robots, Humans, Flying enemies and maybe some Aliens if I have time.

Had to think of a reason not to shoot your gun so decided that you can only shoot when on the ground or on a ladder and will likely have an overheat meter. Adds an element of strategy I think.